A Simmering Argument Despite Two Similar Pasts

By CRAIG WOLFF

Published: February 25, 1993

John Rodriguez and Angel Jimenez shared common problems that could have bound them as friends. The two 15-year-olds were both in a special-education program for emotionally troubled students at Junior High School 25. Both came from families that have struggled to overcome financial troubles while trying to give their children an education. Both seemed to be searching for a place for themselves on the Lower East Side.

Somehow, they wound up enemies, consumed by the sort of adolescent rivalry that sometimes explodes if left unchecked. School officials and classmates said the stabbing of Mr. Jimenez was a final confrontation in a feud between the two youths that had been simmering since September. No one claimed to know how the bad blood began.

As family friends poured into the East Sixth Street apartment of the victim's mother, Evelyn Jimenez, last night, relatives of Mr. Rodriguez said that Mr. Rodriguez had long been the victim of Mr. Jimenez's attacks and taunts.

The mother of the suspect, Rosa Vargas, said her son had been beaten by Mr. Jimenez at least twice. She said that two months ago she had gone to the police and to the school seeking an order of protection, but she had been told that because the case involved minors who were not related, no such order could be given.

Late yesterday morning, shortly after the teen-agers attended the same shop class and only minutes before the stabbing, Mr. Rodriguez's mother said that Mr. Rodriguez called his father on the phone to say that he wanted to leave the school and that his life had been threatened. 'Seemed to Be Building'

William Ubinas, the school district superintendent, said that Ms. Vargas had gone to the Seventh Precinct station house "at some point" in the last several months to show them photographs of Mr. Rodriguez beaten up. But he said it was unclear who had done the beating.

"One thing is certain," Mr. Ubinas said. "This seemed to be building for this young man."

In the family's three-bedroom apartment in the Lillian Wald Houses on East Sixth Street, the victim's mother sat on a couch sobbing heavily and railing against the dangers in the schools.

"How many kids have to die before they do something about security?" Mrs. Jimenez said. "It's safer in the streets than in the school."

She showed a recent photograph of her son, a husky young man in black jeans and a yellow T-shirt. And she said that she often worried about sending her three other children outside to the street, including Angel's fraternal twin, Luis.

In the boys' bedroom, there were two bright red mountain bikes, a collection of matchbox cars and works of graffiti-style art.

An uncle, Raymond Jimenez, said that Mr. Jimenez's father had last worked as a parking garage attendant, but he was now unemployed. He said Mr. Jimenez had sometimes gotten into fights, but he said no one in the family knew of any kind of running feud. Account of Harassment

Not far away and also in tears, an aunt of the suspect, Odalys Rodriguez, stood on a stairwell outside the family's two-bedroom apartment in a walkup tenement building at 143 Ludlow Street, just two blocks from the school.

She said that the victim was the ringleader of a small group of youths who had noticed that her nephew had a slight, gangly build, and had marked him as a "pushover." Her account was echoed in interviews with six students outside the school yesterday.

She said the family, frustrated in their attempts to get protection from the police, recently kept Mr. Rodriguez out of school for two weeks.

A police investigator who insisted on anonymity said the Rodriguez family had filed complaints that the youth had been harassed, but the complaints had nothing to do with Mr. Jimenez.

Photo: John Rodriguez after his arrest in the slaying of Angel Jimenez. (Steve Hart for The New York Times)